Who failed whom?

During the last presidential primary season, we wrote extensively about Mike Huckabee’s excessive use of his power, as governor of Arkansas, to issue pardons and commutations, and his role in influencing the parole process. In one particularly egregious instance, Huckabee worked behind the scenes in favor of releasing on parole a convicted rapist who, once free, raped and murdered a woman in Missouri.
Now we learn that Maurice Clemmons, accused of the execution-style murder of four police officers in Washington state, had a lengthy jail term commuted by Huckabee in 2000. Clemons had served only 11 years of a 95-year prison sentence.
The Huckabee camp is trying to pass this off as failure of “the system” in both Arkansas and Washington. But my friend Bill Otis, a former prosecutor, observes that the “system” had Clemmons behind bars for the duration until Huckabee let him out.